I know that mine would be among them. They are "NOT" going to take away my right guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

I guess they don't know its a right because they've never read the Constitution.

The real story is that they don't care what our founding documents say because they think they know better than our founding fathers who escaped persecution and who were responsible for creating the worlds example of a democracy.

Unfortunately, the people of this country have fallen asleep with complacency and have allowed this country to be taken over by elitists who think they are smarter than our founders.

DEMOCRACY:
Democracy is a form of government in which power is held by " the people" under a free electoral system. It is derived from the Greek δημοκρατία ( [dimokratia] (help·info)), "popular government"[1] which was coined from δήμος (dēmos), "people" and κράτος (kratos), "rule, strength" in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising in 508 BC.[2]

In political theory, democracy describes a small number of related forms of government and also a political philosophy. Even though there is no universally accepted definition of 'democracy',[3] there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all members of the society have equal access to power and the second that all members enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.[4][5][6]

There are several varieties of democracy some of which provide better representation and more freedoms for their citizens than others.[7][8] However, if any democracy is not carefully legislated to avoid an uneven distribution of political power with balances such as the separation of powers, then a branch of the system of rule is able to accumulate power in a way that is harmful to democracy itself.[9][10][11] The "majority rule" is often described as a characteristic feature of democracy, but without responsible government it is possible for the rights of a minority to be abused by the "tyranny of the majority". An essential process in representative democracies are competitive elections, that are fair both substantively[12] and procedurally[13]. Furthermore, freedom of political expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential so that citizens are informed and able to vote in their personal interests.[14][15]

Popular sovereignty is common but not a universal motivating philosophy for establishing a democracy. In some countries, democracy is based on the philosophical principle of equal rights. Many people use the term "democracy" as shorthand for liberal democracy, which may include additional elements such as political pluralism, equality before the law, the right to petition elected officials for redress of grievances, due process, civil liberties, human rights, and elements of civil society outside the government. In the United States, separation of powers is often cited as a supporting attribute, but in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the dominant philosophy is parliamentary sovereignty (though in practice judicial independence is generally maintained). In other cases, "democracy" is used to mean direct democracy. Though the term "democracy" is typically used in the context of a political state, the principles are also applicable to private organizations and other groups.

Democracy has its origins in Ancient Greece.[16][17] However other cultures have significantly contributed to the evolution of democracy such as Ancient India[18], Ancient Rome[16], Europe[16], and North and South America.[19] Democracy has been called the "last form of government" and has spread considerably across the globe.[20] Suffrage has been expanded in many jurisdictions over time from relatively narrow groups (such as wealthy men of a particular ethnic group), but still remains a controversial issue with regard to disputed territories, areas with significant immigration, and countries that exclude certain demographic groups

REPUBLIC:
A republic is a state or country that is not led by a hereditary monarch[1][2] but in which the people (or at least a part of its people)[3] have an impact on its government.[4][5] The word originates from the Latin term res publica.

The organization of republics can vary widely. The first section of this article gives an overview of the characteristics that distinguish different types of republics. The second section of the article gives some short profiles of the most influential republics by way of illustration. A more comprehensive list of republics appears in a separate article. The third section is about how republics are approached as state organizations in political science: in political theory and people governed.

Head of state
In most modern republics the head of state is termed president. Other titles that have been used are consul, doge, archon and many others. In republics that are also democracies the head of state is selected as the result of an election. This election can be indirect, such as if a council of some sort, or a parliament, is elected by the people, and this council or parliament then elects the head of state. In these kinds of republics the usual term for a president is in the range of four to seven years. In some countries the constitution limits the number of terms the same person can be elected as president. This type of democracy was used in Ancient Rome.

If the head of state of a republic is at the same time the head of government, this is called a presidential system (example: United States). In semi-presidential systems and parliamentary republics, where the head of state is not the same person as the head of government, the latter is usually termed prime minister, premier (from the French term for "first minister"), president of the ministers' council, or chancellor. Depending on what the president's specific duties are (for example, advisory role in the formation of a government after an election), and varying by convention, the president's role may range from the ceremonial and apolitical to influential and highly political. The Prime Minister is responsible for managing the policies and the central government. The rules for appointing the president and the leader of the government, in some republics permit the appointment of a president and a prime minister who have opposing political convictions: in France, when the members of the ruling cabinet and the president come from opposing political factions, this situation is called cohabitation. In countries such as Germany and India, however, the president needs to be strictly non-partisan.

In some countries, like Switzerland and San Marino, the head of state is not a single person but a committee (council) of several persons holding that office. The Roman Republic had two consuls, appointed for a year. During the year of their consulship each consul would in turn be head of state for a month at a time, thus alternating the office of consul maior (the consul in power) and of consul suffectus (the subordinate consul who retained some independence, and held certain veto powers over the consul maior) for their joint term.

Republics can be led by a head of state that has many of the characteristics of a monarch: not only do some republics install a president for life, and invest such president with powers beyond what is usual in a representative democracy, examples such as the post-1970 Syrian Arab Republic show that such a presidency can apparently be made hereditary. Historians disagree when the Roman Republic turned into Imperial Rome: the reason is that the first Emperors were given their head of state powers gradually in a government system that in appearance did not originally much differ from the Roman Republic[6].

Similarly, countries usually qualified as monarchies can have many traits of a republic in terms of form of government. The political power of monarchs can be non-existent, limited to a purely ceremonial function or the impact by the people on the country's government can be exerted to the extent that they appear to have the power to have their monarch replaced by another one[7].

The often assumed "mutual exclusiveness" of monarchies and republics as forms of government[2] is thus not to be taken too literally, and largely depends on circumstances:

Autocrats might try to give themselves a democratic tenure by calling themselves president (or princeps or princeps senatus in the case of Ancient Rome), and the form of government of their country "republic", instead of using a monarchic based terminology[8].
For full-fledged representative democracies ultimately it generally does not make all that much difference whether the head of state is a monarch or a president, nor, in fact, whether these countries call themselves a monarchy or a republic. Other factors, for instance, religious matters (see next section) can often make a greater distinguishing mark when comparing the forms of government of actual countries.
For this reason, in political science the several definitions of "republic", which in such a context invariably indicate an "ideal" form of government, do not always exclude monarchy:[9] the evolution of such definitions of "republic" in a context of political philosophy is treated in republicanism. However, such theoretical approaches appear to have had no real influence on the everyday use (that is: apart from a scholar or "insider" context) of the terminology regarding republics and monarchies[10].

The least that can be said is that anti-monarchism, the opposition to monarchy as such, did not always play a critical role in the creation and/or management of republics. For some republics, not choosing a monarch as head of state could as well be a practical rather than an ideological consideration. Such "practical" considerations could be, for example, a situation where there was no monarchical candidate readily available[11]. However, for the states created during or shortly after the Enlightenment the choice was always deliberate: republics created in that period inevitably had anti-monarchical characteristics. For the United States the opposition of some to the British Monarchy played a role, as did the overthrow of the French Monarchy in the creation of the first French Republic. By the time of the creation of the Fifth Republic in that country "anti-monarchist" tendencies were barely felt. The relations of that country to other countries made no distinctions whether these other countries were "monarchies" or not.

[edit] Role of religion
Before several Reformation movements established themselves in Europe, changes in the religious landscape rarely had any relation to the form of government adopted by a country. As an example, Ancient Rome's transition from polytheism to Christianity did not mark the end of the Roman emperor's role in government. Similarly, late Middle Age republics, like Venice, emerged without questioning the religious standards set by the Roman Catholic church.[12][13]

This would change, for instance, by the cuius regio, eius religio from the Treaty of Augsburg (1555): this treaty, applicable in the Holy Roman Empire and affecting the numerous (city-)states of Germany, ordained citizens to follow the religion of their ruler, whatever Christian religion that ruler chose - apart from Calvinism (which remained forbidden by the same treaty). In France the king abolished the relative tolerance towards non-Catholic religions resulting from the Edict of Nantes (1598), by the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685). In the United Kingdom and in Spain the respective monarchs had each established their favoured brand of Christianity, so that by the time of the Enlightenment in Europe (including the depending colonies) there was not a single absolute monarchy that tolerated another religion than the official one of the state.

[edit] Republics may diminish the influence of religion
An important reason why people could choose their society to be organized as a republic is the prospect of staying free of state religion: in this approach living under a monarch is seen as more easily inducing a uniform religion. All great monarchies had their state religion, in the case of pharaohs and some emperors this could even lead to a religion where the monarchs (or their dynasty) were endowed with a god-like status (see for example imperial cult). On a different scale, kingdoms can be entangled in a specific flavour of religion: Catholicism in Belgium, Church of England in the United Kingdom, Orthodoxy in Tsaristic Russia and many more examples.

In absence of a monarchy, there can be no monarch pushing towards a single religion. As this had been the general perception by the time of the Enlightenment, it is not so surprising that republics were seen by some Enlightenment thinkers as the preferable form of state organisation, if one wanted to avoid the downsides of living under a too influential state religion. Rousseau, an exception, envisioned a republic with a demanding state "civil religion":

United States: the Founding Fathers, seeing that no single religion would do for all Americans, adopted the principle that the federal government would neither support nor prohibit any established religion (as had Connecticut and Rhode Island).[14]
Besides being anti-monarchial, the French Revolution, leading to the first French Republic, was at least as much anti-religious, and led to the confiscation, pillage and/or destruction of many abbeys, beguinages, churches and other religious buildings and/or communities[15]. Although the French revolutionaries tried to institute civil religions to replace "uncivic" Catholicism, nevertheless, up to the Fifth Republic, laïcité can be seen to have a much more profound meaning in republican France than in neighbouring countries ruled as monarchies[16].
Several states that called themselves republics have been fiercely anti-religious. This is particularly true for communist republics like the (former) Soviet Republics, North Vietnam, North Korea, and China.

[edit] Other republics may promote a particular religion
Some countries or states preferred to organise themselves as a republic, precisely because it allows them to establish a more or less obligatory state religion in their constitution. Islamic republics generally take this approach, but the same is also true, to varying degrees, in the Protestant republic that originated in the Netherlands during the Renaissance,[17], among others. In this case the advantage that is sought is that no broad-thinking monarch could push his citizens towards a less strict application of religious prescriptions (like for instance the Millet system had done in the Ottoman Empire[18]) or change to another religion altogether (like the repetitive changes of state religions under the Henry VIII / Edward VI / Mary I / Elizabeth I succession of monarchs in England). An approach such as this, of an ideal republic based on a consolidated religious foundation, was an important factor in the overthrow of the regime of the Shah in Iran, to be replaced by a republic with influential ayatollahs (which is the term for religious leaders in that country), the most influential, as well as the highest ranking political authority of the republic, is known as the "supreme leader".

[edit] Concepts of democracy
Republics are often associated with democracy, which seems natural if one acknowledges the meaning of the expression from which the word "republic" derives (see: res publica). Indeed, the word for "republic" in Greek is dimokratia, the same for "democracy". This association between "republic" and "democracy" is however far from a general understanding, even if acknowledging that there are several forms of democracy[19]. This section tries to give an outline of which concepts of democracy are associated with which types of republics.

As a preliminary remark, the concept of "one equal vote per adult" did not become a generically-accepted principle in democracies until around the middle of the 20th century: before that in all democracies the right to vote depended on one's financial situation, sex, race, age, or a combination of these and other factors. Many forms of government in previous times termed "democracy", including for instance the Athenian democracy, would, when transplanted to the early 21st century be classified as plutocracy or a broad oligarchy, because of the rules on how votes were counted.

In the West, there was a convergence towards representative democracy, for republics as well as monarchies, from the Enlightenment on. In particular, the fear of mob rule concerned many, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who supported representative democracies. A direct democracy instrument like a referendum is still basically mistrusted in many of the countries that adopted representative democracy.[citation needed] Nonetheless, some republics like Switzerland have a great deal of direct democracy in their state organisation, with several issues put before the people by referendum every year.

Marxism inspired state organisations that, at the height of the Cold War, had barely more than a few external appearances in common with Western types of democracies[citation needed], notwithstanding that on an ideological level Marxism and communism sought to empower proletarians. A Communist republic like Fidel Castro's Cuba has many "popular committees" to allow participation from citizens on a very basic level, without much of a far-reaching political power resulting from that.[citation needed] This approach to democracy is sometimes termed "basic democracy,"[citation needed] but the term is contentious: the intended result is often something in between direct democracy and grassroots democracy, but connotations may vary.[citation needed]

Some of the hardline totalitarianism lived on in the East, even after the Iron Curtain fell.[citation needed] Sometimes the full name of such republics can be deceptive: having "people's" or "democratic" in the name of a country can, in some cases bear no relation with the concepts of democracy (neither "representative" nor "direct") that grew in the West. In fact, the phrases "People's Republic" and/or "Democratic Republic" were part of the official titles of many Marxist states during the Cold War, including East Germany, North Korea, Mongolia, and today's People's Republic of China. It also should be clear that many of these "Eastern" type of republics fall outside a definition of a republic that supposes control over who is in power by the people at large – unless it is accepted that the preference the people displays for their leader is in all cases authentic.[citation needed]

[edit] Influence of republicanism
Main article: Republicanism
Like Anti-monarchism and religious differences, republicanism played no equal role in the emergence of the many actual republics. Up to the republics that originated in the late Middle Ages, even if, from what we know about them, they also can be qualified "republics" in a modern understanding of the word, establishing the kind and amount of "republicanism" that led to their emergence is often limited to educated guesswork, based on sources that are generally recognised to be partly fictitious reconstruction[20].

There is however, for instance, no doubt that republicanism was a founding ideology of the United States of America and remains at the core of American political values. See Republicanism in the U.S.

[edit] In antiquity
In ancient India, a number of Maha Janapadas were established as republics by the 6th century BC.[21] In the ancient Near East, a number of cities of the Levant achieved collective rule. Arwad has been cited as one of the earliest known examples of a republic, in which the people, rather than a monarch, are described as sovereign.[22]

The important politico-philosophical writings of antiquity that survived the Middle Ages rarely had any influence on the emergence or strengthening of republics in the time they were written. When Plato wrote the dialogue that later, in English speaking countries, became known as The Republic (a faulty translation from several points of view), Athenian democracy had already been established, and was not influenced by the treatise (if it had, it would have become less republican in a modern understanding).[23] Plato's own experiments with his political principles in Syracuse were a failure.[23] Cicero's De re publica, far from being able to redirect the Roman state to reinforce its republican form of government, rather reads as a prelude to the Imperial form of government that indeed emerged soon after Cicero's death.

[edit] In the renaissance
The emergence of the Renaissance, on the other hand, was marked by the adoption of many of these writings from Antiquity, which led to a more or less coherent view, retroactively termed "classical republicanism". Differences however remained regarding which kind of "mix" in a mixed government type of ideal state would be the most inherently republican.[24] For those republics that emerged after the publication of the Renaissance philosophies regarding republics, like the United Provinces of the Netherlands, it is not always all that clear what role exactly was played by republicanism - among a host of other reasons - that led to the choice for "republic" as form of state ("other reasons" indicated elsewhere in this article: e.g., not finding a suitable candidate as monarch; anti-Catholicism; a middle class striving for political influence).

[edit] Enlightenment republicanism

An allegory of the Republic in ParisThe Enlightenment had brought a new generation of political thinkers, showing that, among other things, political philosophy was in the process of refocusing to political science.[24] This time the influence of the political thinkers, like John Locke, on the emergence of republics in America and France soon thereafter was unmistakable: separation of powers, separation of church and state, etc. were introduced with a certain degree of success in the new republics, along the lines of the major political thinkers of the day.

In fact, the Enlightenment had set the standard for republics, as well as in many cases for monarchies, in the next century. The most important principles established by the close of the Enlightenment were the rule of law, the requirement that governments reflect the self-interest of the people that were subject to that law, that governments act in the national interest, in ways which are understandable to the public at large, and that there be some means of self-determination.

[edit] In the United Kingdom and the United States
In his book, A Defence of the Constitutions (1787), John Adams used the definition of "republic" in Dr. Johnson's 1755 Dictionary: "a government of more than one person." But elsewhere in the same tract, and in several other writings, Adams made it clear that he thought of the British state as a republic because the executive, though a unitary "king", was obliged to obey laws enacted with the concurrence of the legislature.[9]

[edit] Proletarian republicanism
The next major branch in political thinking was pushed forward by Karl Marx, who argued that classes, rather than nationalities, had interests. He argued that governments represented the interests of the dominant class, and that, eventually, the states of his era would be overthrown by those dominated by the rising class of the proletariat[25].

Here again the formation of republics along the line of the new political philosophies followed quickly after the emergence of the philosophies: from the early 20th century on communist type of republics were set up (communist monarchies were at least by name excluded), many of them standing for about a century — but in increasing tension with the states that were more direct heirs of the ideas of the Enlightenment.

[edit] Islamic republicanism
Following decolonialization in the second half of 20th century, the political dimension of Islam[26] knew a new impulse, leading to several Islamic republics. As far as "Enlightenment" and "communist" principles were sometimes up to a limited level incorporated in these republics, such principles were always subject to principles laid down in the Qur'an. In Iran, for example, the state is called a republic because it has an independent plural legislature (the majlis) and two independently chosen executives, a secular president and a religious leader (who is qualified as "supreme"). So, although there is no apparent reason why sharia and related concepts of Islamic political thought should emerge in a republican form of government, the movement for Islamic republics is generally not qualified as a form of "republicanism".

The US is actually a Republic.
The United States is, indeed, a republic, not a democracy. Accurately defined, a democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly--through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums. A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, in turn, make policy decisions on their behalf. The Framers of the Constitution were altogether fearful of pure democracy. Everything they read and studied taught them that pure democracies "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths" (Federalist No. 10).

Patrolman Kato
Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself.
They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone
under independence. -- George Washington

Help me figure out what one of those guns is? If you look at the "M" in the logo at the bottom and follow it up, theres a rusty looking pistol that has an apparent magazine slot in front of the trigger.